The Deceiver

McCready's exploits may be dazzling evidence of his value-or damning proof that he must be put aside. in the balance hangs the future of Britain's secret intelligence operations.

Long Synopsis:

Sam McCready has served with distinction for seven years as chief of the covert operations desk of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, a post that is the culmination of a brilliant career as an inventive and intrepid field agent.
But times have changed. A high-level policy decision demands that the SIS strip away its old-style operatives and the first to be targeted for retirement is the freewheeling McCready. No one is more eager to be rid of the Deceiver than Timothy Edwards, a ruthless careerist who sees in McCready's demise a stepping-stone for his own ambitions. Offered his choice of two positions-an obscure administrative job or early retirement-McCready has only one further option: the hearing to which Foreign Office regulations entitle him.
Sharp-minded, somewhat cynical, McCready is a maverick whose independent style has often driven him beyond the rules. He has not been afraid to press the CIA to the explosion point in an effort to convince them their prize defector is a double agent. Once, he hired a low-level German agent as a courier to deliver a priceless Soviet document to the West-a man he subsequently had to race the KGB to find. He sent an Ulster veteran deep into Libya to subvert a Qaddafi plot to ship a lethal cargo of arms to the IRA and terrorize Britain and the U.S. And most recently there was the notorious instance when he acted far beyond his brief, taking over a remote Caribbean island torn between Fidel Castro and the Colombian drug trade.
Presented to a panel of his peers, McCready's exploits may be dazzling evidence of his value-or damning proof that he must be put aside. Presiding over this long-shot effort by a great spy master to save his career will be Timothy Edwards, McCready's most determined foe-and in the balance hangs the future of Britain's secret intelligence operations.
Here, in the skillfully constructed history of a seasoned agent, is a provocative study of the changing face of espionage from the Cold War to the Gulf War, rich in the deft detail and unparalleled insight only Frederick Forsyth, master of the novel of intrigue, can deliver.